About the author

Donn Risolo has been a soccer writer, editor and publicist since 1973. His new book, “Soccer Stories: Anecdotes, Oddities, Lore and Amazing Feats,” was released recently by the University of Nebraska Press.

"From conspiracy to controversy, this is a unique look at famous and not-so-famous incidents from world soccer. There's something here for all who love the game."

-- JP Dellacamera
World Cup and Olympic soccer commentator

"Risolo's Soccer Stories is precisely what it promises to be .... The author delivers it all in conversational, enthusiastic, and readable prose."

-- Benjamin D. Lisle
Journal of Sport History

"Fans will get a kick out of Soccer Stories: Anecdotes, Oddities, Lore and Amazing Feats. Read about highlights in soccer history from around the world, including Brazilian players paid in cattle, an African club that scored 149 goals against itself in one game, and more."

Bayern Munich forward Julian Green has applied to FIFA to change his national team association from Germany to the United States.

The highly touted 18-year-old, who was born in Tampa, FL, will become the latest German-American to join the U.S. National Team pool under the USA’s German coach, Juergen Klinsmann, following in the footsteps of dual-nationalists Jermaine Jones (Besiktas, Turkey), Timmy Chandler (FC Nurnberg), Fabian Johnson (Hoffenheim), John Brooks (Hertha Berlin), Daniel Williams (Reading, England), Terrence Boyd (Rapid Austria) and Alfredo Morales (FC Ingolstadt).

The son of an American father and German mother, Green moved with his family to Germany when he was 2. He played for Germany’s under-16 and under-17 teams, then represented the U.S. in an U-18 friendly against Holland. He later played for Germany in a qualifier for this year’s UEFA Under-19 Championship.

“We are absolutely thrilled,” said Klinsmann, who first attempted to call up Green for U.S. friendlies in November. “He is a very special talent.”

The teen winger has made just one appearance for Bayern Munich, a brief stint in November at the end of a UEFA Champions League match against CSKA Moscow. Green has been a regular with Bayern’s Regionalliga team, scoring 15 goals in 19 games. [March 18]

Comment: Green is unlikely to play a role in the USA’s adventure at Brasil ’14, but this June we will finally learn whether the German way is the American way when it comes to soccer.

Back in the mid-1970s, when the growth of the North American Soccer League was forcing a spotlight on the American game in general and the national team in particular, the U.S. Soccer Federation took the tack that the style that best suited its team was German. It hired Dettmar Cramer, an assistant to Helmet Schoen on West Germany’s 1966 World Cup runner-up team, as coach in August 1974. Cramer was in charge long enough to lose two games to Mexico, throw up his hands at the lack of talent, money and organization at his disposal and, 5 1/2 months into his tenure, returned home, where he would guide a Bayern Munich starring Franz Beckenbauer to consecutive European Cup titles. Less than a decade later, the USSF tried again with the appointment of former FC Cologne coach Karl-Heinz Heddergott as national coaching director, but Heddergott ran into the same frustrating constraints. All the while, critics of this Teutonic shift claimed that the national team program–if “program” was the right word–was ignoring the coming USA wave of Latin players, eventually led by hyphenated Americans Hugo Perez, Tab Ramos, and Claudio Reyna, that would transform the national team and carry it to glory.

The U.S. has had a link with German soccer that dates to 1923 with the founding of the powerful semipro German-American Soccer League (later renamed the Cosmopolitan Soccer League) in New York, a circuit whose best players helped make up the roster of the original New York Cosmos in 1971. Paul Caliguiri made a major–and unlikely–breakthrough when he leaped from UCLA to Hamburger SV in the late 1980s. He later played for SV Meppen, Hansa Rostock, SC Freiburg and FC St. Pauli, paving the way in the Bundesliga for players like Eric Wynalda, Kasey Keller and Steve Cherundolo. U.S. coach Bora Milutinovic’s decision to bring FC Kaiserslautern midfielder Tom Dooley–son of an American serviceman and a German mother–into the national team fold established a two-way street whose inbound lane has only increased in traffic by plenty under Klinsmann.

But it’s not just personnel. Klinsmann has tapped into characteristics common between the two cultures. Despite shortcomings that continue to keep the U.S. out of the top 10 in the FIFA rankings, the Americans’ compulsion, like the Germans, is to attack. On a good day, Klinsmann has his players pressing forward–some would say recklessly–at speed with six and seven players, followed, at speed, by a similar commitment on defense. High tempo, hard work. They expect to win every challenge. They count on wearing down the opposition long before the final whistle. And like the West German teams Klinsmann grew up watching and then playing for, they now consider no deficit insurmountable. The U.S. demonstrated that resolve by tying host Russia, 2-2, in late 2012 on two late strikes. The following June, in a World Cup qualifier, it squandered a 1-0 lead late in Jamaica and emerged with a 2-1 victory.

Above all, for those who remember Steve Sampson’s team of complacent U.S. veterans who crashed at the 1998 World Cup, Klinsmann has called out his established players, introduced interesting outsiders and created a player pool that may not be deep but is certainly competitive as the 30 players with a realistic chance to make the trip to Brazil are whittled to the final 23.

The critics from long ago must feel permanently slighted at this point: Klinsmann has turned his back on any possibility that Latin flair is the USA’s recipe for success. It’ll be grit, not beauty, heading into Brazil this year. Some of the players may have names like Omar Gonzalez, Michael Orozco Fiscal, Joe Corona or Juan Agudelo, but it’s not the name, it’s the mentality and the approach. After all, when Klinsmann’s looked over his shoulder two years ago at the German National Team he once coached, the joint scoring leader of the European Championship was a German named … Mario Gomez.

FC New York of USL Pro has forged an affiliation with the Springfield, MO, Demize of the fourth-division Premier Development League, Tampa-based United Soccer Leagues has announced. The Demize will serve as a feeder club for the third-division FC New York. [November 24]

Comment: American soccer has a long history of dreadful official team nicknames, conjured up by fan votes, focus groups, wrongheaded marketing types, headstrong club owners who aren’t as creative as they think they are, and other guilty parties.

The champion for a time, of course, was MLS’s Kansas City Wiz, which mercifullychanged its name to Wizards after a couple of seasons. Earlier this month, it drew jeers for changing its name yet again, this time to a masterstroke of incongruity: Sporting Kansas City (or, according to other accounts, Sporting Club Kansas City). Never mind that, unlike Sporting Lisbon (Sporting Clube de Portugal) or Hamburg SV (Hamburger Sport-Verein), the Kansas City Wizards under any name is not a major traditional European sports club with thousands of dues-paying members who cheer on the big-time soccer team and also engage in club activities like volleyball, basketball, athletics, weightlifting, gymnastics, rugby, aquatics, etc. Sporting Kansas City just sounds . . . European-ish, soccer-ish. What’s the sense in making sense?

But back to New York and Springfield. Until a pro soccer team comes along with something like “suicide” or “felony” in its nickname, nothing can top “Demize.” After all, with the exception of the more durable Sporting Lisbon and Hamburger SV, plus the Wiz/Wizards/Sporting KC, Kraze, Chaos, Outrage, Riverhounds, Menace and Jesters, the clubs mentioned above, are no longer with us. They’ve met their . . . y’know.